Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Matthiessen's final novel to be published this month


Oneworld will bring forward the UK publication of Peter Matthiessen’s final book, In Paradise, to the end of this month (April).
The US author died on Saturday (5th April) aged 86 after an illness of some months.

Matthiessen co-founded The Paris Review and won awards for his novel The Snow Leopard (1978), about the Himalayas, and for Shadow Country (2008), a reworked trilogy of novels about a notorious Florida outlaw, Edgar Watson, and the disappearing Everglades in which he lived.
Matthiessen’s American publisher Penguin US said: “Matthiessen’s exceptional body of work, much of it about the planet’s remaining wild places and the people who inhabit them, was inspired by boundless curiosity and lifelong travels, most recently to Mongolia in the summer of 2012, when he was 85. It was also fuelled by a disciplined work ethic.”

His literary agent, Neil Olson, added: “Peter was a force of nature, relentlessly curious, persistent, demanding—of himself and others. But he was also funny, deeply wise and compassionate.”
Penguin US’s Riverhead Books will publish Matthiessen’s final novel In Paradise tomorrow (8th April) and the UK’s Oneworld has brought the publication of In Paradise forward from June to the end of April following the news.

Juliet Mabey, publisher at Oneworld, said: “We feel incredibly privileged to have been given the opportunity to publish Peter Matthiessen's final novel, In Paradise, a very bold and deeply moving meditation on the legacy of the holocaust. It will prove a fitting tribute to a man who set himself extraordinarily high standards in life and in his writing.”
In Paradise is inspired by a profound experience Matthiessen underwent as a participant in a Zen meditation retreat at Auschwitz in the 1990s.

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